It looks like Biden had a pretty bad day, which isn’t surprising, because he’s Joe Biden. Biden, like many of us, is better in some surroundings than others. Biden was great in the context of the disciplined Obama administration. He had his ups and downs in an environment which allows greater self-indulgence like the Senate, and he’s absolutely terrible when he’s completely off the chain, in campaign mode. If he persists in his quixotic desire to run for President, there will be many more bad days to come.
I’ve watched Biden over the years, and I have to say I’ve never thought much of him in the context of the Senate. We may have become used to him over the years, and he does seem to have been honest, but if you wanted to have someone portray an asshole politician on TV, you’d imitate Biden. The capped teeth, the hair plugs, the tan, the suits and shirts from Orrin Hatch’s tailor. The incessant bloviating and preening at Senate hearings. I know everybody does it, but the guy who is going to rise above the Senate (like Obama) is going to do far less of it than Biden or his other colleagues.
I can’t find the video of it, but I remember watching part of a hearing of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee where Obama was making one of his first appearances as a Senator. As Obama was talking, Biden was noisily reading a newspaper, snapping the pages and generally being an asshole. This stuck in my mind because it’s classic indulgent, entitled, old white man behavior. Someone who would do that is a little to far up his own butt, a little too much in love with the privilege he’s gained by being a safe seat Democrat for years, to see things from the perspective of others. And Biden’s supposed strength, foreign policy, sure didn’t seem so strong when he voted for the Iraq war.
Let’s not forget that his first Presidential campaign shit the bed after Biden plagarized a speech (and a biography) from Neil Kinnock, and other speeches from Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. That some of the plagarism might have been Pat Caddell’s work only bolsters the accusation that Biden is a bad candidate, because the first sign that you’re a bad candidate is terrible taste in advisors. And who among us will forget the bright, articulate, clean-cut campaign he ran in 2008? Enough said about that shit show.
If you want to know why Biden is going to crash and burn, don’t just look at his behavior at the Hill hearings, or his overly familiar touching that made a lot of women uncomfortable over the years – those are bad enough. Look instead at the way he handled it today, and you’ll see how he’s going to keep fucking that chicken until his campaign is consumed in a trash fire of his own making.
Barbara
Biden did not shine in his previous presidential campaigns, and as I can’t be the only person to have noticed, people’s dominant traits seem to become more concentrated over time. Maybe he thought he only needed to phone it in this time. But for today, I think enough is enough and I am going to tune out presidential candidates for a little while.
Cacti
Cool kid MM jumps on the shit on Joe Biden bandwagon.
This is my surprised face.
Jeffro
Biden’s not going to light anyone or anything on fire this campaign…he’s the D Jeb Bush of 2020 (please clap) or perhaps more accurately, the D Bob Dole of 1996 (‘my turn’, even thought I’m way too old and out of touch).
Name recognition and some leftover glow from the Obama years ain’t enough to win a primary, much less a general. Sure hope Dem donors don’t blow $100M plus helping him limp into March 2020 but if they do, it’s their loss. That’s as far as he’ll go.
Earl
Kind of worth nothing that Obama didn’t seem to be a huge Biden supporter in 2016. Given their 8 years long working relationship, that’s telling.
mak
Anita Hill hearings, Chronic Fondling / Me Too movement;
Crime Bill / Mass Incarceration;
Bankruptcy Bill / Student, medical debt.
Joe Biden (D MBNA) has been on the wrong side of pretty much every major issue he ever stuck his thumb into. With the possible exception of VAWA, every signature piece of legislation he was behind has had direct, shitty consequences for the US.
The only possible upside to Joe running is the possibility that he could hasten Sen. Bernard Sanderz’z demise in the primary.
Hard pass on Joe for Prez.
beef
I’m not willing to write Biden off until he slips in the polls. He’s very well liked by a wide swatch of Democratic voters. I remember seeing one poll recently that showed him as the only likely 2020 candidate (R or D) with a net positive approval rating.
Polls matter, because they aggregate across the population in a way that media chatter and blog bullshitting just doesn’t. I doubt any of us here knows a wide enough group of people personally to say how voters are really responding to Biden’s week of bad news.
B.B.A.
But Mark Halperin thinks Biden did nothing wrong.
To be clear: every moment that Halperin draws breath is, in and of itself, a crime against humanity.
jl
We’ll see if a viable candidacy survives to his planned Announcement Day, and if he is any shape to meet his polling expectations.
Biden is smart and talented in many ways. He was great as a VP who actually took some responsibility for serious policy work, and would be great in the cabinet.
But, has he announced any policy initiative at all for his run? Anything at all? That is a serious question. Anyone know? He’s acting like his kindly uncle Joe schtick can carry him through the primary. I don’t think so in the current political mood. A serious candidate needs serious policy. I can cut Beto and Buttigieg a little slack, very little, since they are relatively new. But Biden has no excuse.
Well, the voters will decide. Will be interesting to see what they think.
And seriously, if anyone knows of any policies Biden stands behind and says he will fight for (other than vague boilerplate, like the three cheers for labor unions he did today,) please put up a link, because I been looking.
Edit: why has Biden not, to my knowledge, even mentioned his past policy accomplishments to counter several of the criticisms made of him? It is puzzling to me. My theory (guess) is that he’s lost his nerve from previous disappointing pres runs, and he is following stupid political consultant advice to run on Kindly Uncle Joe. But, I have no idea, just guessing.
plato
For a person constantly written off as an old handsy bugger who will never catch on with the dem voters, bj bloggers seem oddly obsessed with biden with everyday bashing pieces.
Amir Khalid
Biden was a mediocre candidate before, and he’s not shaping up to do any better in this very strong field. He is running because, despite the evidence, he still thinks he is a contender. I think that’s all there really is to it.
Mike in NC
Just go away, Joe. Your legacy has nowhere to go but down.
Mary G
I am still convinced that the reason he keeps putting off announcing is that the big donors and top campaign workers are staying away, and grassroots donors are in for Kamala/Beto/Liz/Pete.
maeve
There’s a lot more reasons why Joe is not my front runner – mainly because he wants the republicans to be his friends – he’s known them for so long! they are good guys! (emphasis on guys) But its sort of hand-ons (literally) with his brand that he still can’t recognize that his comfort with personal space is not other’s comfort and its only coming up now because “others” are feeling more empowered to speak up.
Looks like Alaska is going to a rank-choiced primary instead of a caucus! Yeah! Joe will be far down on my choice but if he does become the national democratic nominee I will still vote for him
Gin & Tonic
Dude, he’s 76 fucking years old. Move on.
jl
@Mary G: That may be the case. I heard a news blurb a few weeks ago that Biden was thinking about how to finance run, and where big money donors would be on his campaign. If so, seems very out of date thinking. Biden is, or should be, smart enough to have seen growing importance of small donor support in Democratic circles and done something about that long ago. But, looks like he hasn’t.
oldster
“The incessant bloviating and preening at Senate hearings. I know everybody does it, but the guy who is going to rise above the Senate (like Obama) is going to do far less of it than Biden or his other colleagues.”
Not everybody does it. For instance, when AOC is in House hearings, she is laser-focused and concise. When Elizabeth Warren is in Senate hearings, she is sharp and no-nonsense.
It’s just my own demographic — old white men — who love to hear themselves talk.
It’s about time for us to sit down and shut up for awhile.
jl
As a positive gesture towards Biden, I think he is far better than Schultz, Ryan, Mouton or Gabbard.
There, I said it! And I’m not backing down.
jl
@oldster: Whitehouse, who I think is a pre-old white guy, is concise and businesslike and more effective with fewer words than most, too.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
He received enthusastic standing ovations from the audience – union electrical workers.
I’m not a Biden supporter, but I think the blogosphere underestimates him.
Jay
“
Here’s the problem: Biden is defiantly hugging people now. He’s engaged in a lite form of Trumpism — They tell me what I’m doing is politically incorrect, but I’m just going to keep doing it, he seems to be saying.
This works for Trump because he plays the anti-PC card with maximum anger. He wants his voters outraged, and they want to be outraged. Republican voters like that sort of thing. The ones that don’t like it tolerate it, because even they are driven by extreme negative partisanship — they may think Trump is crude or gauche, but they despise Democrats, liberals, and tolerance just about as much as the overt haters do.
Biden isn’t trying to do this in an angry way. However, he’s reminding some Democrats — mostly the older ones — that The Kids want certain boundaries respected that older Americans never used to worry about.
The longer Biden makes an issue of this, the more anti-PC Democrats will think about their resentment of modern standards of behavior, and the more younger and woker voters will resent the people who aren’t keeping up. It’s making Democrats resent other Democrats.
We didn’t need to have this argument in the 2020 race, but we’re having it. “
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2019/04/biden-is-now-sowing-division-among.html?m=1
19 months to go, isn’t this gonna be fun.
Mike in NC
My state rep is an ojhld white guy in his 70s. My shitty state senator is another conservative old white guy in his 70s. Why can’t we get younger politicians who aren’t committed to the special interests like ALEC?
marc
Nah, that’s an asshole take. Biden is basically a good man. His time is past, for sure. But he’s a good soul.
Jay
@jl:
You should strike Covfeve Boy from the list. He’s not a Democrat.
p.a.
Not on-topic, but a Q for a fresh thread:
Anyone seen comments from Omnes, Corner Stone, burnspesq (sp?), or Yarrow lately? burns I think I have, the other long-timers ??♂️
The Dangerman
A shame, as Biden strikes me as a decent person; how he handled the McCain thing on The View was touching.
But, from “Out Of Time” (REM), we have “Endgame”, which if you’ll forgive me for bastardizing the lyrics, we have “bye, bye, bye”.
Bye, Joe.
Ruckus
@oldster:
When you get in a bar fight with a smile and a handshake, you aren’t going to end up bruise free. When you show up to armed combat with a smile and a handshake, a bruise is the least of your worries. Republicans have made this armed combat that they can’t afford to lose. As we’ve seen from 2018, they came armed with dummies and dipshits. The arms we need to fight with are intelligence, policy and democratic ideals. Joe only knows a smile and a handshake. And his smile and handshake were old hat 10 yrs ago.
jl
@Jay: ” However, he’s reminding some Democrats — mostly the older ones — that The Kids want certain boundaries respected that older Americans never used to worry about. ”
I think more accurate to say that many older people accept that some types of people used to have very strict boundaries and others did not, and are OK with Biden acting as people used to, and accepting his word that his heart is on the right place in terms of equality, fairness and equity.
I might be old enough to think that way about Biden. But I have spent years working in environments where the old ways are not acceptable, and I myself am bothered by talking the talk but not walking the walk. So I’ll cut Biden some slack on his past behavior, but if he is passive-aggressively hugging it out now to show, I’m not sure what, I don’t like that approach.
Gin & Tonic
@p.a.: OO and burns have been around. CS hasn’t. Yarrow, I think Adam’s been in touch.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m Team Broken Glass, and since most people vote on affect rather than actual policy, maybe this is Uncle Joe’s moment. But one of Obama’s grand muckety-mucks was on MSNBC yesterday (Messina, maybe?) and sounded distinctly unenthused about Biden. The O’Bros seem pretty lukewarm on him as well, but they’ve at least sipped a bit of Wilmer-Ade these days.
What bugs me about Biden isn’t necessarily his centrist/moderate lean– I think he’s right that the media and the AOC/Bernie wing confuse the latter’s internet presence with popularity among actual Dems– it’s the sneering attitude he brings to his critique. As the No More Mr Nice Blog blogger put it, his sarcastic dismissal of MeToo and party activists leaves me with a really bad feeling about his future
Ruckus
@p.a.:
OO shows up occasionally, has in the last couple of days, Corner Stone haven’t seen for quite a while, burns was on either today or yesterday. I remember reading something about Yarrow, maybe taking care of family?
West of the Rockies
@p.a.:
Pretty sure I’ve seen OO and burns within the last few days.
West of the Rockies
I still miss Hovercraft!
Barbara
@p.a.: Omnes corrected my French grammar this morning. Definitely up and running. Haven’t seen Yarrow lately, but I think I have seen relatively recent comments from the others.
rikyrah
Rob O’Dell (@robodellaz) Tweeted:
More than a year ago, I was asked to do the impossible. Help build an algorithm that could tease out what statehouse bills were created from model legislation (ie copy-paste legislation). Along with a terrific team @USATODAY and @azcentral. We did it. Here’s how. (THREAD) https://twitter.com/robodellaz/status/1113868879338434560?s=17
plato
totus thug
Bobby Thomson
@mak: this, this, this.
p.a.
TY
tobie
I’m surprised at the number of people I know IRL who want Biden to run. I guess they feel he has the stature to defeat Trump. I don’t dislike Biden, as others do here, but I think his days as a candidate are past and the best service he could do for party is to be the elder statesman in the general campaign.
I saw Andrew Yang for the first time on TV tonight. I wouldn’t vote for someone who has never been in public service but I’m glad to see a candidate addressing the industrial revolution we’re going through right now. We’ve been playing ostrich when it comes to dealing with automation for far too long. It’s easier to blame job losses on immigrants or China or free trade deals than to own up to the fact that the nature of work itself is undergoing a transformation. A universal basic income is a good strategy for providing a baseline for everyone. As a nation we will need to figure out what the jobs of the future will look like and how to get ahead of the curve.
BigJimSlade
Love is always scarpering or cowering or fawning… and inappropriate touching, I guess.
At least he’s not Trump – he`s got a mind like a sewer and a heart like a fridge.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Cacti:
Oh come on. He’s a bad fucking candidate. Stop being obtuse.
jl
@rikyrah: Thanks. Very interesting article and tweet thread.
I assume the had a few lines of code for when the state legislators were so lazy they just left if ‘a model bill from ALEC’ at the top.
Some surprising patterns in the states. Doesn’t all fall out by CW conservative-liberal divide, even for industry and conservative model bills.
TS (the original)
At least he’s not trump – can be said about every candidate for 2020. Will never understand why the media attacks anyone when trump is not only ruining the US, but also the democracies of the world. he’s just appointed a world bank President who hates the World Bank
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47832806
jl
I guess other bright side is that I saw some swing state polling a couple of weeks ago that every major Dem candidate near the top of polling beats Trump. That includes Biden, he who shall not be named, Harris, Warren… some others.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jay:
What did you think of Pelosi and Stacey Abrams’ comments on Biden’s touchy-feely habits?
trnc
Mix, I strongly agree with everything you wrote, except:
Nobody voted for the Iraq war. They voted for the AUMF. No doubt, some senators were cheerleading for the war when they voted and some may have been indifferent. I haven’t looked for any Biden speech to see what the context was for his vote, but I know of one senator who strongly laid out the reasoning for her vote. I think it put a lot of faith into an administration who was already known for acting in bad faith, but I support the statement she made and her decision.
Jay
@jl:
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
One of the things that bothers me is that after Brexit and 2016, every Campaign needs to be aware of how anything, more so taken out of context, can be weaponized on the Internet and used not only against the Cantidate, but also the Party.
The Freshmen Class and the most of the Women, seem to get that.
TS (the original)
@plato: Any other President …….. If trump is not in the last stage of dementia, he is barely human based on his views of non-white people.
Omnes Omnibus
@p.a.: I am around. I have just been commenting a lot less recently.*
@Barbara: Are you sure it wasn’t Steve in the Where-ever-the-fuck? Middle-aged frat-boy law-talkers can tend to look alike.
*Even money on whether plato or eemom makes the first sarcastic comment.
WaterGirl
@B.B.A.: Was it Halperin who said Obama was being a dick? All I recall is that it was one of the entitled blowhard media pricks of the male variety.
Emma
I am still of the mind that I will vote for an Everglades python if it gets rid of Donald Trump. Even if I have to get good and stinkin’ on rotgut vodka to do it. It’s the most important thing any of us can do.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Ugh – UCONN blows 9 point lead to ND.
Fire Geno
jl
@WaterGirl: yes, Halperin is one of the world historical figures in founding the current US media school of mindless incompetent always wrong two-bit horse race tout political journalism that hold policy and fates of the ‘lesser people’ in complete contempt.
But, perhaps more to the point, Halperin lost a recent media gig for sexual harassment in a league that Biden would never even contemplate. Halperin is a vile hypocritical jerk for even thinking about saying anything at all about Biden’s touching issues. Halperin harassed women, in job setting, when he had power over their careers.
Edit: going by Halperin’s past behavior, you could rub your junk into a junior colleagues’ face, let them know their career depended on them being ‘understanding’ about it, and you would have done nothing wrong. So much for Halperin’s opinion.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: yup, Michelle Goldberg’s take
self-satisfied naughtiness… I like that. You could just see that Halperin was so proud of himself for being so edgy!
WaterGirl
@plato: BJ appears to be trashing the various Democratic candidates in turns. First it was Beto, and then the Beto slagging slowed while the major flogging went to Buttigieg, and now Buttigieg appears to be sharing the slamming with Biden.
The Obama guys on Pod Save America were saying last night that it makes sense to talk about differences in policies between our candidates, but that when we start attacking our own Democratic candidates, even this early in the game, we are doing Trump’s work for him.
Ruckus
@tobie:
The nature of life in a lot of places has changed probably more in the last 100-125 yrs than in maybe 500 before that. In some parts of the world it still hasn’t changed as much as it has in the major industrialized world but in that it has changed dramatically. I’m 69 and in my life, world travel, world communications, medicine, has changed more than it did in thousands before that. The changes that allowed that have made huge changes in manufacturing and living that has allowed countries that weren’t part of the industrial revolution to become much more a part of the modern world. And yet we have countries still fighting battles that are hundreds of years old and countries, specifically us, the UK and Australia have significant percentages of folks who think that going backwards is a far better way to spin time. That they haven’t actually figured out how to reverse time is what will do them in. But they are their own worst enemies and will take anyone down with them that they can. The world has changed, it will continue to change and if one stands in the way of that rather than trying to help shape it better, one will get run over, taking a lot of innocent people with them.
Jay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I thought they were perfectly “en flique”,
Bang in the money for now, dated if Biden carries on,….
jl
@WaterGirl: Isn’t ‘Trash All the Thngs’ a BJ commenter motto? Is there a thread without some trashing?
WaterGirl
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: You know who else the blogosphere underestimates? Sanders. The Obama guys struck fear into my heart in their podcast last night by talking about how Sanders could hoover up delegates in the early states. I really hadn’t let myself think that Sanders could actually end up being the nominee, and it was chilling to listen to that. It’s gonna be a long 18 months so we had better pace ourselves.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@plato:
Barbara
@Omnes Omnibus: It was Steve but he put “/Omnes” underneath his text, hence my mistaken attribution. Maybe he was trying to trick me, although I can’t imagine why.
jl
@Ruckus: Maybe so. But you could say the same thing during the Industrial Revolution. I think focusing on technology alone as a unique factor in labor and wage problems, without looking at politics and economic policy that went along with it is a mistake.
Technology has advanced at an unprecedented pace. But unleashing corporate behavior from its historical and economic roots in promoting overall social welfare for the sake of short run profits for executives and shareholders, damn the costs to anyone and anything else, has also proceeded at an unprecedented pace. Need to look at both for a good policy solutions.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@WaterGirl: Sanders lost by 3,708,294 votes last time, even though he didn’t face any scrutiny. If it was a general election he would have lost 403 electoral votes. At age 80, he won’t do any better.
B.B.A.
@WaterGirl: Policy is irrelevant. As long as Cocaine Mitch has 41 votes in the Senate and John Roberts has 5 on the High Court, no Democratic policy will ever see the light of day.
Jay
@Barbara:
Is he scheduled to arbitrate a Union Contract with you?
jonas
@tobie: I agree — I’ve seen/heard Yang interviewed a couple of times and he strikes me as extremely thoughtful and smart. I don’t know how much traction he will get with his “we have to do something about the AI train that’s about to steamroll us all” platform, but I think we ignore this issue at our peril.
Little hard to pay attention to that, or other existential crises like climate change, however, with the ambulant YouTube comment section currently squatting in the Oval Office.
Ruckus
@TS (the original):
He’s not in the last stages of dementia.
I’m not an expert but I’ve had two members of my family die with dementia. My dad and his mother. My grandmother lived with us her last couple of years, my dad went 20 yrs from the first signs with Alzheimers. I believe Trump is in the middle stages of dementia, but he’s not in the last stages. He’s making progress and that’s not good either. But he’s not in the last stages.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That is a great turn of phrase. I also like the part you highlighted in blue – very well stated, not a word wasted.
Omnes Omnibus
@Barbara:
It’s just his nature.
WaterGirl
@jl: I don’t ever recall the kind of ugly trashing and hostility we have seen here of late. Not as a regular thing, anyway. It pretty much happens in every single thread about 2020 candidates.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Goldberg is good.
WaterGirl
@Barbara: I remember that. I don’t think Steve was trying to trick you; I think he was indicating that he was either channeling Omnes or was paying tribute to Omnes with his comment.
jl
@jonas: There is a hell of a lot more human foibles and conventions and social history in the current ‘AI train that’s about to steamroll us all’ than most people suspect. I’ve helped deep learning grad students with their statistical training problems and validation and prediction problems, and I state with full confidence that there is as much human as there is algorithm in a lot of problems that AI has been creating.
AI is like big scary rapid technological change. I don’t believe it is useful to look at it as factor independent of the human society that creates, uses it, and decides who should get the gains versus who should bear the costs.
I’ll listen to Yang, I’m curious what his ideas are for solutions, but I am skeptical of what I have heard of his premises so far.
tobie
@WaterGirl: This has been my fear for some time. Sanders is likely to get support from 30%. The remaining 70% could be split among umpteen candidates, leaving Sanders with a plurality of the votes. I’ve said before that this is exactly what happened in the gubernatorial race in Maryland in 2018. We had 5 serious candidates–1 was Sanders-style candidate Ben Jealous and the other 4 were solid Dems in the mold of HRC. Jealous won a plurality in the primary because the other 4 split the vote. He went on to be thrashed in the general. I’d hate to see this happen on a national scale.
Omnes Omnibus
@B.B.A.:
Horseshit.
WaterGirl
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: As I understood it, the worry was that the other candidates might not get the 15% of the vote or whatever is required in order to get delegates. It was late at night so I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but it scared the shit out of me.
jl
@WaterGirl: I guess we have a different reaction to threads on candidates. Since 2008, I expect posts on candidates to draw some really nasty vitriol. Maybe its worse in some ways now, but I think it has been here for several election cycles.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@WaterGirl:
I can see what you mean. But I do remember the primaries and even most of 2017 being pretty hostile here. A lot of trolls, like NR, kept wanting to relitigate the 2016 primaries, if I recall.
jonas
@WaterGirl: Expect a SHITTON of ratfucking by Trump people/Russia on Wilmer’s behalf in the coming months.
WaterGirl
@B.B.A.: That was the other frightening thing from the Obama guys on their podcast. They said that if Trump got enough votes in the general in 2020 that we would most likely lose the House, too. I can’t even bear to think about that — the only saving grace right now is that we have the House.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: I used to read and comment regularly at Jerome Armstrong’s blog that I can now barely remember the name of (My DD ?). It got really nasty there in ’08, and I have to admit I played a part in that nastiness. The PUMAs there (and they were proud to be PUMAs) were part of the blogosphere “strike”, if you remember that. I went looking for some of those Clinton die-hards in ’16 and couldn’t find them. I wonder if they all drifted to twitter.
tobie
@jonas: @jl: My exposure to Yang is from his interview on Chris Hayes tonight so I don’t have a full picture of his take on automation but, at least in this interview, he was talking about job losses in manufacturing due to robotics. I took what he had to say seriously since it matched up perfectly with everything I’ve heard from Brad DeLong on the topic.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
We are all burned raw by 2016 and the Trumpistan Years.
ER’s and GP’s are seeing floods of patients sickend from politics and the news.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I completely agree. I also like Alexandra Petri.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@tobie:
How did Ben Jealous take his loss? Did he regret running and fucking up the Dems’ chance at taking the governor’s office in Maryland?
I know Sanders would take it badly, if somehow he becomes the nominee and goes down in flames in the general, because he’s a narcissist too. He would never take responsibility for his loss.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree. Policy can get out the votes needed to get solid majorities in Congress.
Also, cynical me thinks it is a mistake to take anything any political operatives, consultants, nerds, activists, data gurus, etc. say in these political analysis pieces and talks right now at face value. Most of these people have an agenda they’re pushing, so I take all pronouncements of these people with big grains of salt. They are all thinking about job prospects in the next campaign and after next election, for just one thing.
WaterGirl
@jonas: Absolutely. The scary thing is that I see some really smart people on BJ falling for it already.
Jay
@jonas:
It started a while ago. What’s his name spent Nov, Ddc, Jan, Feb trasing all comers in The Guradian before it came out he was on Wilmer’s Campaign.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: @Omnes Omnibus: yup, Goldberg’s one of the best voices in big media platforms. IMHO.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: In 2007-2008, I recall Daily Kos getting kind of ugly so I ended up spending a lot more time on the Obama blog. MomSense was one of the people on that blog – there were a ton of really high quality people there who walked the walk. That was kind of a magical time for me.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@WaterGirl:
Did they happen to say roughly how many votes he would need for that to happen? Trump won by very slim margins last time. He’s deeply unpopular and has been for the past two years.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
It is our job to discuss the candidates, their positives and negatives. Yes this used to be done in smoke filled back rooms and now is done for the whole world to see and read but it is better this way. We will still have flawed politicians because all of us are flawed to some degree and we can’t forget that. But this is an important race, far more important than 2008 was, because 2018 was so bad. So we are going to hear stories about every candidate. It’s better that we get them out front early rather than late. There is time for both ourselves and the candidates to address the issues, their level of importance so that we can make reasonable choices. Our country, for way too long sort of let the political class and the deeply involved pick and decide our candidates. But we get to do that now, not the political class nor the MSM has nearly as much say over the process as it used to. We can fight back. And look at the field. We have a gay man, only 2 yrs over the minimum age limit. We have senators, we have people of all colors, both sexes, serious people, and several of them would likely make satisfactory presidents. We are going to have to decide and come to agreement on which is best and elect that person. It’s over 1 1/2 yrs to the election, we have time, we have the candidates. Sure we can’t/shouldn’t shoot ourselves in the genitalia fighting over which one is better, but we have an opportunity that I haven’t seen in my lifetime, to make a difference.
jonas
@jl: I hope you’re right. I’ve had conversations with Silicon Valley folks in recent years, however, that really do resonate with what Yang is saying. Having human foibles baked into it, however, doesn’t mean it won’t eventually displace a lot of workers in a lot of fields and cause massive disruptions in our society. Maybe we’ll all be better off in the long run under our new robot overlords! Who knows? But what happens in the meantime when driverless big rigs replace all truck drivers, or robots effectively replace all stock people/checkout people at every retail outlet, or most financial advisers and stock brokers? That won’t happen all at once, or totally seamlessly — but it’s a trajectory over years, not a single event that we’re looking at here. That’s what Yang’s talking about. It may not happen next year, or in five years, but it’s coming.
WaterGirl
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: They did not.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Their point was that we need to discuss the candidates and positions and vet the candidates, but without attacks and without the vitriol that does Trump’s work for him.
tobie
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I don’t remember his concession speech but his supporters have tended to attribute his defeat to (1) the lack of support from the state Democratic establishment and (2) the fact that our Republican governor is popular so any Democrat would have faced an uphill battle. The second point is true but it doesn’t entirely explain an 11 point defeat in a blue state in a swing year. A better candidate might have lost but not by a margin like this.
jl
@Ruckus: I agree. A candidate will get attacked in a political campaign. And the Democratic candidate will probably be running against an absolutely ruthless Trumpster GOP, even if Trump’s crimes catch up with him before 2020 and he is out of the pic (which looks increasingly unlikely).
Better to find out if a candidate has the political skill and courage to take an attack and counter it, and go on the offensive and do damage after taking a damaging attack during the primary than in the middle of a general.
Right now I support Warren, but I’m not going to get all pissy and self-righteous when she gets attached. I can contribute, but she has to show she can campaign like a champ. Same with other candidates near the top of my list, like Harris. Same with candidates not near the top of my list like Biden and BS.
B.B.A.
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree. Take it up with Mitch, he’s the one who made policy irrelevant.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@WaterGirl:
I deeply hope that won’t happen, like you. It would be incredibly devastating. I definitely think that we should reserve our hatred for Trump.
jl
@WaterGirl: Then I think those guys were pissing in the wind. I wish that they were not, but I reluctantly think that they are. Some people get riled up more than others by confrontation and competition. Some people are naturally more tribalistic about lots of things than others.
We can counsel people not to get vitriolic, and can set an example by our words and deeds. But vitriol will happen between people and groups, and example and counseling will only go so far. In the end, I think a candidate’s ability to be a persuasive and compelling leader is the final answer to outbreaks of vitriol. And no way to find out except trial by experience.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Yeah, a lot of the nastiness here lately seems to be nastiness for its own sake. It’s far too early for the level of vitriol we’ve been seeing. Me, I am pretty fucking happy that we have a slate of very good to awesome people getting into the race. I want to see which ones have end up standing after Super Tuesday and I see great roles in Democratic politics for almost all if them in the next few years.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@tobie:
So never his fault then. I can see Wilmer’s supporters pulling similar bullshit.
WaterGirl
@jl: Agreed. Obama had Reverend Wright and some other events that would likely have derailed a less skilled candidate.
I am pretty forgiving of *missteps of various candidates at this point, but they had better learn quickly. I think they basically have until the debates in June to get it together. I wonder if the June debates will be early in the month or later in the month, which only matters because the difference between 2 and 3 months can make a difference in how well the various candidates get their collective legs under them.
*missteps are one thing, but I also think that when a candidate shows us who they really are, we need to pay attention. In this age of disinformation, it’s hard to know — without some due diligence — what is real and what is deliberate disinformation and what is merely the result of the “telephone” game. Twitter is like one giant fucking game of telephone, and it’s easy to get caught up in thinking something is true just because you read it on twitter or read it on a blog. Or in the media, for that matter!
jk
You’re being too generous to Uncle Joe. During any Senate hearing, he was always the biggest goddamn showboater in the room. He never gave a fuck about actually gathering useful information. He was always preoccupied with going off on extended monologues and mugging for the tv cameras.
Biden was wrong about the Iraq war, the crime bill, and banking deregulation. I can’t think of many issues where he was on the correct side.
Hopefully, his campaign will crash and burn early on so that the media can turn its attention to other candidates.
HRA
@WaterGirl:
Thank you! The words of we are trashing our own candidates have been playing through my mind for days now and I was conflicted on whether I should say something or keep to my usual read only status.
Hope.
jl
@WaterGirl: Certainly, we should counsel friends and family and loved ones to not get caught up in social media, or corporate media BS. Everyone except hard core Trumpsters should give you a listen when you explain how the population was buried under mountains of BS from several sources, and Trump eeked out a disastrous win, squeaking by with less than 100K votes to spare in a few swing states thanks to people who were fooled. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me… etc. (or is it ‘blame’? I hope I didn’t mangle the saying as badly as Dub did).
mak
@tobie: My understanding of the Biden > Trump thinking is that one must Fight Fire with Fire: Biden (kindly, homespun, overly affectionate, gaffe-prone old white guy with bad hair plugs) is the only one who can defeat Trump (also an old white guy, albeit vile, lecherous, and mendacious, w/ coat of orange shellac and even worse piss-yellow dyed hair). In fact, I think Biden himself (or his media lackeys) have made just this argument. I get the the logic, but think it’s simplistic, and fails (for the same reason that a Biden candidacy would fail).
I hate Andrew Sullivan as much as the next Democrat, but was lured by a tempting NY Mag click-bait headline into reading his latest thing, which raised the possibility that the key to defeating Trump would be to display Trump’s worst attributes by presenting them in contrast to their absolute polar opposite, in the form of Mr. Pete Buddha-judge. I’ve seen the Buttigieg = the Anti-Trump line before, and Sullivan checks all the boxes there, but also poses the very intriguing question/thought experiment: how would each of the Dem candidates fare against Trump in a debate?
Ruckus
@jl:
No argument here, but I believe that the technology made a lot of the growth in the conglomerates and that led to what you are saying. People made/make money using electronics that couldn’t do that 50 yrs ago.
Dan B
@jl: Come sit by me.
Moulton/Ryan/Gabbard/ and who else was it? Still I have friends who think Biden is their guy. He did speak up for gay marriage befire Obama. And for that I’m eternally grateful. But he has deep roots in big corporate and good old boys. He’d do himself much honor by providing assistance to the bright lights of the Dem party. And whatever mentoring they request. It seems like his support for minorities and women is because he’s a decent guy. I believe we need some tacticians and warriors, whether they’re brazen or stealthy. Buden seems like an LBJ type, influencing the powerful entrenched interests.
Cacti
I can’t help but notice that the same BJ brain trust who decided that Edward Snowden was a gold plated hero without peer, are the same bunch who have now decided that Joe Biden is the world’s worst person.
Pardon me if I don’t find that your judgment has improved with age.
WaterGirl
@HRA: Yeah, it seems like there are two different camps at this point. Those who want to hear about and talk about the candidates without trashing the candidates that aren’t on their preferred list, and those who want to tear down the candidates that aren’t on their preferred list. I am fairly obviously in the first camp and am not enjoying the vitriol.
I am not really a zero-sum person. At work, I figure if you look good, we all look good, and I don’t have to make you look bad to somehow elevate my position. The same is true for me here. If I think certain candidates are great, or possibly great, I don’t need to tear down your candidates to make my candidates look better. There are different ways of looking at the world, I guess, even when people are ostensibly on the same side politically.
jl
@mak: I think a mistake to think that there is some magic ONE thing that will defeat a mess like Trump. I think there are several good Democratic candidates who could easily beat Trump. I’ve seen swing state polling that show huge declines in support for Trump since 2016. All the major Democratic candidate currently near the top of the polls beat Trump by at least five points right now in some critical swing states. So, that means that several Democratic politicians who are hated and despised and deemed worse than Satan himself, and sure losers against Trump by some part of the BJ commentariate, is currently beating Trump in the polling.
I can’t take any analysis or opinion piece that claims we need to worry about some one secret or magic formula that is needed to beat Trump. We can’t be complacent, and we should expect the fight of our lives, and hope the best campaigner with really good policies emerges as the nominee. But I personally think there as many ways to beat Trump as there are good Democratic candidates.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl:
I have to say that any discussion of WI, MI, and PA in 2016 that doesn’t acknowledge voter suppression is not very convincing to me.
jl
@Ruckus: Read up on industrial concentration before Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressives started trust busting. Maybe they couldn’t do it 50 years ago, but they could 130 to 100 years ago. Mind boggling technological advances made both spurts of concentration possible, but so did the legal and political environment, and the prevailing (and IMHO utterly bogus) economic scientism of the times.
But, we may just have a fundamental disagreement in outlook on it.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree, but that is another and separate discussion to have with people we know to get them to contribute to voter rights movements and legal actions. What to talk about with people you know to get them to act in a productive way was the context of my comment, not an overall analysis of what happened.
Edit: I do and do and do for you dang kids these days, and what thanks to I get. It’s a life of sacrifice, a life of sacrifice, I tell ya. You kids get off my lawn right now!
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: How can it be a fucking lawn if all that’s there is dirt and dog shit?
Ruckus
@tobie:
Robotics take over the mundane, repetitive tasks of production. There are still a lot of skilled jobs that have to be done by humans. That will go away slowly but never all the way.
An example was me.
In my shop I purchased a machine in the early 90s that cost $256,000. That was and still is a lot of money for a one man shop. Except that machine could run unattended 24 hrs a day and work to a precision level of 5 decimal places. That’s .00005 or 50 millionths of an inch. And that’s tiny, as in has to be measured in a climate controlled room to detect if it’s right. What made this so positive for me was I could press the button and go home, come back the next day and work was accomplished. I didn’t have to hire anyone to watch the machine. It would work 24 hrs a day for days on end and do it with precision far better than a human. Usually the human is better than the tools, not in this case. That same machine today is just as accurate, works the same 24 hrs a day, all day, every day, but is far faster. And costs about the same. The human that can’t even create the outcome without the machine? More expensive, not one bit faster. And that’s your manufacturing advances. It’s not as much AI as it is just replacing jobs that are repetitive, as in come to work, do the same thing over and over and go home. Day after day after day after……. And we never found much in the way of replacement work for the people that did this nor will we for the people that are still doing it. In my case the skilled labor necessary was very hard to find before that level of automation and is still difficult to find. But less of it is necessary.
stinger
I loved Biden as part of the Barack-Joe bromance. But Obama was clearly in charge of that relationship, both in his position and as the stronger personality. Biden without that overt guidance and those subtle constraints, not so much.
Sab
@WaterGirl: I am in Tim Ryan’s utterly safe gerrymandered district. I have been holding my nose and voting for the guy for 15 years. I hope his latest antics inspire someone better to challenge him in the next primary.
He isn’t stupid at all, but he is utterly white male privilege. He knows he has the Democrats in the bag, so he is trying to appeal to the Reagan voters (disgruntled white men) who are restive in his end of the disrict. That’s not so much my end of the district.
My small city dealt with the economic changes of the 1970s and 1980s by trying (successfully) to diversify. His end dealt with it by bitching about the steel mills closing. They are obsessed with NAFTA when it is the WTO with the US standing down on enforcement that got us where we are.
Lordstown auto is absolutely devastating to his end of the district. But nobody (and certainly not Ryan) is willing to say that Trump’s stupid steel tariffs is what finished that plant off. The company had planned to keep it open. Now not so much.
Also he used to be an extreme pro-lifer until he wanted to run in a bigger pond. And he had an A+ rating from the NRA for years and lied about it in communicating with his constituents.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
This is what went on in those smoke filled rooms. Until the boss made a decision. Screw that. Sure it’s messy, sure it’s nasty, but now you get a say in it. Sure that makes it even somewhat more difficult but we have to fight back, which is what you are doing right now. We have to remember that not everyone is on our side but everyone gets a say. That’s actual democracy. And as much as it sucks, how much does it suck to hire someone who is a complete fucking asshole and is 10000% incompetent? We are the HR department, and like it or not we have a job to do, and do right. We will hear shit out job is to fight back, to support the candidates that we think are positive and move forward. We are just in the seeing resumes now. We are weeding out the incompetents and the grossly unsuitable candidates now. (That’s BS and JB at this point) That still leaves us with a positive field.
Jay
@jl:
My Click Bait Article on “ The One Weird Trick”, comes out tomorrow on the Axios e-mail thingy,….
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Barbara: I suspect he’s unpredictable that way. And probably takes no small measure of pride in it.
TriassicSands
I’ve never been able to understand why anyone likes or respects Biden. I felt sick to my stomach when Obama chose him as his running mate.
Jay
@Ruckus:
Back in the ‘80’s, my neighbor was a mechanical special effects guy on such illustrious TV shows as Viper.
His “side” was jury rigged, automated, old precision lathes in his garage, that ground out common, precision feed screws for other machinery.
It made him more money than his and his wife’s day jobs, but it wasn’t challenging or exciting, but Viper was.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
I’ve been an employer, hired and fired a number and range of people. I’ve given people I didn’t know a chance to prove themselves on lots of occasions. I’ve been burned by some who didn’t have the skills they said and some whose references and their skills were wildly differing. I’ve given people the benefit of the doubt and been rewarded as well. I have over the last 45 yrs hired men and women and been rewarded and burned in about the same ratio by both. Far more rewards than burns by the way. But this is how it goes when you actually have to make a choice. I’ve voted in CA all my life other than a couple of elections in OH. I’ve never really gotten to make the kinds of decisions that we have now. I’ve always had to go with who was left by the time it came around to me. I think that’s wrong in a political system. And I think that saying what you dislike about someone is fair game. You may be 100% wrong, you may find that you are 100% right. Normally that’s not the right percentages but still you get a choice and a say in this. I like it. It’s our lives at stake. My life may in fact hinge on how well we do, I use the only federal healthcare system we have, the VA. It doesn’t do well, I may not do well. I’m not alone, a lot of us have a real strongly vested interest in exactly who we choose. I’ll be 71 when we vote, I’d like to have helped pick at least one good candidate in all those years.
Sab
@TriassicSands: One of Obama’s huge strengths was he recognized peoples potential and put them in the right slot.
Biden was really good at dealing with Congress. A lot of the stuff that got thru in the first two years was due to Biden’ s negotiating . Also Obama got him off the Judiciary Committee and the Sunday talk shows, where he was disastrous.
He was also pretty good at getting that huge infrastructure plan (bailout) supervised with pretty much no graft/grift and no scanda.
Jay
@Sab:
Unfortunately, that was during the last 2 years of “bipartizanship” and before ReThug prion disease and the Tea Baggers,
Unless you are under 50, it ain’t your Dad’s ReThug Party anymore.
Some Democrats don’t understand that.
Some Democrats pretend they don’t understand that because of the MSM.
It’s hard to tell who is whom, but it’s easy to tell the ones who “get it”, #Go Nancy Smash!
Ruckus
@Sab:
I’ve often wondered if that is why President Obama asked him in the first place. A decent human being who knew the ins and outs of where he worked but really not all that good at the job in the over all context. With guidance he made a decent VP and a good sounding board for President Obama. I think he’d be a disaster as president. Of course he’d look good in comparison to the far worse than useless fuck we have now. We can and need to do far better.
Sab
@Jay: I am well over 50 (65l) and I come from a long line of Republicans since Lincoln. I bailed early, under Nixon, with his Southern strategy and the Vietnam escalation. ( I am well to the left of the rest of my family.) Everyone else bailed on Republicans. My mother died at 84 as an independent, couldn’t bring herself to be a Democrat. I have a sibling who is elected to local office in California, who has bailed from the Republican party there because he finds their positions utterly in conflict with actual responsible governance.
Sab
@Ruckus: I think thats exactly what happened. A decent guy, not so good at his job but with amazing contacts and all kinds of immediate charisma.
Ruckus
@Sab:
You’d probably like the reply I sent the other day to the CA state republican party, thanking me for being a member. I held back no punches, I hope they like swearing because they got a lot of that. The CA republicans are a strange lot, in 2008 I was living in Marin county and worked the dem headquarters there for President Obama’s election. We had about 25 or 30 people easy. I’d forgotten my readers so had to walk to the local drug store to buy another pair and walked by the republican headquarters. 3 old farts, who were doing nothing but sitting down looking at the walls. We worked the entire day it was hectic, people of all ages and colors coming and going and excited to be helping however much or little we did.
Ruckus
@Sab:
65? Just a child!
A bit of a note here, if you are a day younger than me – a child. A day older – old fart.
I am thinking of adjusting this, as so many people I now run into are younger than me and in worse shape and others older than me and still going stronger. Oh well we are what we are and can only do so much with what we have or don’t. I’ve outlived a lot of people I know so there’s that. The old saying that you are only as old as you feel has some merit, but it also depends on how much of that old that you feel. Going to a sports banquet tomorrow that I attend each year and there are a lot of people who really are old. Some I’ve know since my 20s and they were adults then.
Sab
@Ruckus: My sibling is in Marin. They aren’t as rich as they think they are. He knows that. He doesn’t want all the municipal workers to get stranded Doesn’t sound very Republican to me. Life intrudes to interfere with what you thought your values are.
Uncle Cosmo
@tobie: Jeebus cripes, how long have you lived in MD? At least 1/6 of registered Democrats in MD are DINOs who will crawl over broken glass to vote against any POC or woman with a (D) beside their names. We are probably doomed to a run of Thug governors because the DINOs aren’t numerous enough to prevent a candidate of color from winning the Democratic primary** but are often numerous enough to tip the general to the GOP.
** In the 2018 primary, Jealous & Rushern Baker, both AAs, hoovered up nearly 70% of the vote; no other candidate received more than 8.3%
Steeplejack (phone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, it was Steve; he put an #Omnes tag on his comment.
mere mortal
I’m fine with almost everything you said here, Mr. mistermix, but I’ve just got no patience for this “scandal” or whatever the fuck it is. Half of it makes me shrink in revulsion because I saw it all before when Franken was Swiftboated.
Except this is worse, it’s almost comical in that every “accuser” prefaces their experience with the acknowledgement that there was nothing sexual or abusive going on, they each just have some sort of mental illness that precludes human contact.
He’s not getting my primary vote, that’s for Warren, but all of this bullshit stiffens my spine, and I don’t resent him one ounce for mockingly saying that he’s been given, and has had to receive, permission to touch other humans.
It’s fucked up and bullshit.
Kathleen
@Cacti: He’s a threat to Bernie, dontchaknow.
ETA: I’m not supporting a Biden run BTW. I do like how he polls better than St. Slanders, who claims it’s “his turn” after accusing Hillary of being crowned the nominee.
Booger
Late to the thread, natch, but am I the only one who thinks Biden has gotten a lot of slack over the years because of the tragedy in his personal life?
Singing Truth to Power
@Jeffro: @Jeffro: “Leftover glow from the Obama years” sums up Biden’s candidacy for me. I’m almost as old as Biden is, but he is OLD. I think he was a good vice president – but I think he would be a terrible candidate, and not a good president. I’m hardly ready to discard any candidate just on the basis of age, but Joe and Bernie need to sit this out. Ego isn’t enough.
Johnnybuck
I still think Harris would be better, but I’m not about to begrudge anyone who likes Joe Biden. He leads the polls for a reason if only because of name recognition, Obama etc. I think a Biden/Harris ticket would be pretty formidable. Similarly, I think a Harris/Beto ticket would be a winner. In fact these three candidates are the only Presidents I see in the field. I expect one of them to prevail,
J R in WV
@p.a.:
I think Yarrow is eaten up time wise caring for one or more failing parents, which can consume your time.
Been there, done that. Worth it afterwards, but OMG hard …
ProfDamatu
@Ruckus:
This is pretty much where I am. Especially after having a long Facebook debate last night wherein several longtime Democrats steadfastly, aggressively refused to understand why Biden’s handsiness is a problem. A couple of them danced right up to the edge of calling me a Trump supporter for saying that Biden’s conduct is problematic, even more so when his response to his critics has demonstrated that he just doesn’t get it, and that in the context of many of his political positions (bankruptcy bill, etc.) (and penchant for stepping on his own dick when let loose in a campaign)…we can do better. And further, that it’s okay to have these discussions now. If it were April 2020, and Biden had mathematically secured the nomination, then sure, I’d be right with them telling the critics to sit down and shut up. But it’s not.
J R in WV
Regarding people and hugging. We have a wonderful and compassionate vet, one of the many good vets at the clinic we mostly go to. We went by because we owed them a couple of hundred bucks from when Happy Dawg died in January. We went by in person because we wanted to thank Dr R for saving Happy in the first place 12 years ago, with 9 months of free care for Heart Worm for a 3 Y O lab mix mutt, before we even met the girl. So we got a wonderful companion from Dr. R’s compassion and charity work~!
So after a short conversation, wife asked Dr R if she could hug her, and Dr R said I’m really not a hugger, but OK, and it was like wife hugged a pretty tree stump instead of a pretty woman Vet. Pretty funny, really. I didn’t even offer to shake hands with her.
I’ll be posting some puppy and farm pics to On the Road soon, and will include a great photo of Happy Dawg just the way she should be remembered.
Some people really really hate physical contact, and that’s OK. But the way to deal with this is to never slide in behind someone and touch them, especially someone you don’t know. Reach out to them, see how they respond. If they reach out for a handshake, stop there, don’t climb their arm up into a hug. Unless they’re already a friend you know and hug often!!
tam1MI
@Sab: Rumor has it that Ryan’s district is going to go away in the next redistricting.
@mere mortal: I have met more lifelong Dems than I care to count who have told me that they weren’t planning on voting for Biden before but plan to now because EFF THOSE PEOPLE!!! (With a side order of, “this was a ratf**king operation orchestrated by the Bernie camp).